"Broken Hallelujah"

"Broken hallelujah" I don't know why this song (Hallelujahs) has hit such a chord with me today. It is beautiful and haunting all at once. I have lived a charmed life, really, and yet I cry as he describes what love is not. It's not a "victory march", "it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah". Expectations are a few of the devil's favorite things. If I fool myself into thinking that the abundant life is going to be one that has a permanent toothy grin, then I have set myself up for feelings of defeat and betrayal. At some point in this life, your victory march will get interrupted by a funeral procession. If you're not prepared for that--because you thought if you did everything "right" you would be immune--it can really knock you out. But when you wake back up, this is when the beauty of the "broken hallelujah" is within reach. This is the bewildered, broken--"Lord, to whom would I go, you have the words of life"--cry. This is where faith meets the hard slap of reality and, after it falls, and while it's still holding itself in shock and awe, renews it's shaky vow: Hal-le-lu-jah. It's that moment when you experience for yourself the sentiment of Job: "Though he slay me, yet will I praise Him." Not because you're resigned to a malicious god, but because you have seen enough to believe He is still GOOD, in the face of what you are seeing now. This is the utterance of the one who remembers: "His ways are higher and His thoughts are Higher", "He makes known the end from the beginning". And in the end, He has promised us, there is a victory march. But for now, your broken hallelujah's are music to His perfect ears.